Conventional residential and commercial oven appliances generally include a cabinet that defines a cooking chamber for receipt of food items for cooking. Heating elements are positioned within the cooking chamber to provide heat to food items located therein. The heating elements can include radiant heating elements, such as a bake heating element positioned at a bottom of the cooking chamber and/or a broil heating element positioned at a top of the cooking chamber.
Generally, oven appliances are preheated prior to inserting food items into the appliance's cooking chamber. Such pre-heating can be necessary to heat the oven appliance's walls, doors, and other exposed surfaces and bring the temperature of the oven appliance up to a steady-state operating temperature. Prior to such pre-heating, radiant heat transfer from such components can be insufficient or unsuitable to properly cook food items within the cooking chamber. Generally, oven appliances activate the broil heating element and the bake heating element during the pre-heat cycle. In particular, the broil heating element and the bake heating element are generally operated at a single constant power output during the pre-heat cycle until the steady-state operating temperature is obtained. During such pre-heating cycles, any food items placed in the cooking chamber may not cook properly because the amount of heat provided to the food items and the exposure to radiant heat from the broil heating element does not match that of a pre-heated (steady-state) oven. For example, the top portion of the food items may cook more quickly than the bottom portion of the food items due to the activated broil heating element.
To avoid such heat imbalance, a user must generally wait for the cooking chamber to reach the steady-state cooking temperature before inserting food items therein. However, waiting for the oven to pre-heat can consume a significant amount of the user's time. For example, pre-heat cycles can take over ten minutes to complete depending upon the operating temperature desired.
Accordingly, an apparatus or method for decreasing the pre-heat time of an oven appliance would be particularly beneficial.